


17. Call A Friend

by GideonGraystairs



Series: 146 Things To Do Besides Self-Harm [17]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alec Lightwood Feels, Alec Lightwood-centric, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Universe, Drabble, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 01:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11863701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GideonGraystairs/pseuds/GideonGraystairs
Summary: And ask them to distract your demons for a while.This is a series of unrelated drabbles, meaning they can all be read separate.





	17. Call A Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to [Tumblr](http://raphaelsantiago.co.vu).
> 
> Full title: call a friend and ask them to come hang out.

The phone is… Well, the phone is a lot of things, really. Innocent, unassuming where it sits on his dresser with a blank screen and an empty promise for him to fill with whatever he wants. Daunting, accusing where it  _sits_  and doesn’t ring, but begs him to pick it up and call someone. To see the promise he’s made to himself through, all the way to the bitter end.

_Get better. Try harder._

He stares at it. At the chip in the corner of the screen from when Isabelle knocked it off the kitchen table. At the scratch on the home button from when Jace yanked it out of his hands and told him to stop pining.

Sometimes, Alec wonders when something as stupid as a phone call is going to stop feeling like climbing Mount Everest.

He takes a breath. It sticks in his chest, heavy, and fills his lungs like acid eating away at the organs. He exhales and the room feels smaller, all the acid in the air and eating at his skin. Only, his skin has already been eaten away at by a lifetime of living up to unfair expectations and punishing himself when no one else will because pain has always been the sole result of his decisions and if it isn’t there then nothing makes sense anymore.

_Get better. Try harder._

He picks up the phone. It’s cold in his hands, colder than he’d expected. The contact list is short, ten numbers and ten names and a true testament to how little effect he’s had on the world. How little his life has amounted to.

_Get better. Try harder._

He could call Jace. They’d don their weapons and thick combat boots and go seeking the thrill of cutting something and watching it bleed and Alec could pretend he doesn’t seek that when he’s alone, too, and the only demon in the room is himself.

_Get better. Try harder._

He could call Isabelle. They’d raid the Institute’s kitchen for ice cream and load a trashy movie onto her laptop, curl their feet up on her bed and huddle together as Alec pretends that his skin doesn’t crawl when someone touches him and his chest doesn’t ache when she’s looking at him like she knows something no one else has figured out yet.

_Get better. Try harder._

He calls Magnus. His hands are shaking and he hates it, hates them, hates himself, but there are so many promises he’d be breaking if he put down the phone.

_“Promise you’ll tell me if things ever get that bad.”_

It rings and the sound is so piercing, so loud in the silence, that it almost shocks him back to reality just like that. Almost snaps him out of the chest-aching, head-burning, hands-shaking world he’s in. Magnus picks up on the second, and his voice is so sweet and so kind that it almost manages it, too.

He swallows. It sticks, acid, and he forces himself not to think about it.

“Can I come over?”

 


End file.
